baked salmon with herb butter

I wonder if there will be a time when I am such an experienced gardener that I won't feel compelled to let out an audible yelp when the first herbs emerge again. Someday I'll take it all in stride, and when new gardeners ask me inane questions, I'll coolly answer with only the slightest tinge of a smile.
But that's not now. Now I cheer, and I do a little dance around the yard.
Because the truth is, I still don't believe it. I don't believe that perennials will come back, and I sure as hell don't believe that my seeds will turn into plants.
And sometimes they don't.
But, when they do, it seems nothing short of a miracle.
I am overwhelmed today. There are too many things right now. I'll leave it at that. But when I looked at my list after dinner, and Joey saw my face all pinched up, he said, "Go plant those damn radish seeds you've been talking about." There were other items on that list that were far more pressing, but I went, and before I knew it, I was actually humming, I was so happy. The sun put on the most lovely show for me as it set, and when I was just finished with my four little uneven rows of carrots, beets, and radishes, the sky went and rained for me. Can you believe it? Just out of the blue, like a little hand, patting my back, saying, "Good job, honey, no need to drag out that hose. Go on inside, and we'll finish up here."
Now I'm back with that list, but I feel a little better. Thank you, April.
And the chives? The chives are back, and the tarragon and oregano are on their way too. Glory be. I will be eating many herb butters from here on out, and I hope you will join me.


Baked Salmon with Herb Butter
adapted from Alice Waters, The Art of Simple Food
serves 4

1 pound wild salmon fillet
salt and pepper
olive oil
1/4 cup butter, softened
generous squeeze of a lemon
kosher salt
Herbs of your choice, but chives and dill are especially nice with salmon, about 1 T of each

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Prepare the herb butter: Combine the butter, herbs, lemon, and a pinch of salt. Mix well.
Cut the salmon into 4 pieces. Arrange on a parchment lined baking dish. Season with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 7-9 minutes, until just cooked through. Serve with a large dollop of herb butter on top of each piece.

the butter lamb

This morning, Sadie woke us up pretty early. She had set up little bowls of dye from a kit scored from the dollar store earlier this week. She ran into our bedroom, jumping up and down, chanting, "Can we dye eggs now?"
We rolled out of bed, and she continued to dance around us as I stumbled through coffee preparation. "What do I do? What do I do."
"The thing is," Joey said in some sort of Israeli- Indian accent for extra effect. "Your Mamma and Poppa are Jewish, and we have no idea what to do."

Really, that is only a half truth. We are sort of Jewish. We are genetically Jewish and a little bit culturally Jewish. We were raised with Brooklyn old people and bagels, with intermittent Yiddish cusses, and with distant second cousins who may have showed us the terrifying and mystical tattoos on their forearms, those badges of ultimate strength and survival.
Yes, we are Jewish. But our Grandmothers are gone on both sides, and this week, we brought the girls to their very first seder.
It was a lovely one- held in a little house on the grounds of Gould Farm, where my parents live. A passionate and liberal young Jewish volunteer at the farm had amalgamated her own Haggadah, and it was filled with inspiring messages of social justice, of curing the current plagues of racism, homophobia, poverty, and the like. It focused on the spring ritual of Passover, and of our own rebirth at this time. The girls loved it, and they ate their matzoh and charoset with gusto. It felt really good to be there.
When we got home, Sadie asked me the question that she had asked earlier in the day. "So what is Passover? Why is it called that?" I took a breath and gave it a shot.

"Well, when the Jews were enslaved in Egypt, they asked God, or the Great Spirit, or you know, Nature, to help them out, and he, I mean it, I mean, I don't know, sent all of these horrible things to the Egyptians to convince them to release the Jews, and all the first born sons of the Egyptians were killed, and the Jews were told to put bl- I mean, a mark on their doors, so that the angel, I mean, the spirit, I mean, I'm not even sure if I've got this story right, would pass over the houses of the Jews."

I really wish my grandmother was here.

But as I feel this sentiment more and more, I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that I'm going to have to become my own grandma, not in the creepy camp song way, but in the way that I need to start to own this a little bit. I am a grown up, after all. And I used to really love Passover. I'm thinking that it's time to actually get clear on the stories, and to roll up my sleeves and make some gefilte fish.
It can't be that hard, right?
When I say that food is at the center of a holiday for me, it may seem like I'm missing the point. There is God to consider, and gratitude, and whatever else might be involved in that particular celebration. But lately I've been doing some thinking about why food is my focus in general, and why I have come to this as what I want to do. And although I'm still thinking about this, and I'm not sure that I have the words yet, I'm coming to think that food itself may not be a symbol or a side note of celebration and faith- I think it might have the capability to really be the thing that we celebrate. It's all wrapped up together. So I'm maybe getting somewhere on this holiday question, and right now I'm thinking that food is going to be the way in. A meal prepared with the right mind state is, after all, a very powerful thing.

I guess that when it comes to food though, I am really a Unitarian at heart. It turns out that one of my favorite food traditions from this time of year that I have experienced comes from Catholics in the mountains of Poland.

A few years ago, Joey came home with a gift from one of his students. Joey comes home with a lot of pretty fabulous things- homemade Christmas ornaments from pine cones and glitter, gorgeous sculpee magnets- he gets a lot of love and craft from his kids. But this one was different. At first, I wasn't quite sure what to think. It was begging to be photographed, and so, I obliged.

This is the first butter lamb I ever saw. I was enthralled, mystified, and instantly in love. I googled "butter lamb" and found hundreds of images of carved and molded butter lambs, but none so beautiful as the one on my table. It had been gifted to Joey by a little girl named Felicia, whose mother, Marya, had been raised in the Polish Catholic community in Adams, MA, up in Northern Berkshire county. It turns out that the lambs in her church used to be made by the nuns, who had a special mold for their shape. Way back, the mold broke, and the nuns started making the lambs by hand. Yes, the Adams nuns actually broke the mold. That is why the butter lambs coming out of Adams were so much more lovely than any others that I could find on the internet. I had to know more.

Lucky for me, Rosie and Felicia proceeded to become great friends. Two years after I first met that butter lamb, I finally convinced Marya to show me how to make my own.

First, a little more history. Butter lambs, or baranek (baranki is the singular, but who would want to make only one?) are an Easter tradition from a place called Zakopane in the southeastern mountainous region of Poland. On holy Saturday, people would take a basket to the church to be blessed, filled with foods to be eaten when the fast was broken on Sunday. Sometimes in Zakopane, the priest would actually travel around from home to home to bless the baskets. The centerpiece of this basket was the butter lamb, and it would be consumed with the Easter meal on Sunday.

The women in Marya's family still make butter lambs ever year, sometimes over a hundred. At five, Felicia is stepping right into her shoes, and she and Marya led us through the process the other day.

To make your own butter lamb, you will need:

2 sticks cold butter
2 cloves
cinnamon
metal skewer
paring knife
potato ricer or garlic press

1. Start with one stick of butter in front of you. With the paring knife, draw three lines on the stick, dividing it into thirds. Cut one third off with the paring knife. This will be the head.


2. With the paring knife. Scrape a bit of butter off the longer piece that is left. This will be your glue. Use it to affix the shorter piece to the longer piece. Use your hands to smooth it together.

3. Use your paring knife and your hands to smooth all of the hard edges off of the head and body. But all of the excess butter into a pile in to use in a minute.

4. Take the other full stick of butter. Cut one pat off of it, and cut that pat diagonally. This will be the nose. Once again, scrape a bit of butter to use for glue, and use it to affix the nose to the head. The lamb should be looking directly at you. Use your hands to make the seam smooth.


5. Now make the ears. Using the other mostly full stick of butter, cut two long slices off the corners, like this:

6. Create a bit more glue to affix the ears to the head, going out sideways.

7. Now put whatever extra butter you have collected into the ricer or garlic press. You are going to make the fur.

8. With your metal skewer, scrape some fur off the ricer. Apply it to the lamb by pressing the skewer onto the lamb, then firmly pulling the skewer away. Start around the nose and ears, and move out from there.

9. When you have covered the lamb with fur, adjust and smooth out with your hands and the skewer.

10. Now use your skewer to poke two holes for eyes. Poke two holes for the nostrils and a line for the mouth. Find two matching cloves for the eyes.


11. Dip your skewer into cinnamon and mark the nostrils and mouth. Put the cloves into the eyes, and you butter lamb is done!


Happy Holiday, whatever it may be for your family. Thanks so much to Marya and Felicia, for sharing the secrets of the butter lamb.

apple honey oat snack

If you were in my kitchen today (which some of you actually were), you would have helped out with some random jam making from frozen blueberries that had overstayed their welcome, and you would have finally gotten to compare ricotta coagulated with citric acid and ricotta coagulated with lemon juice (lemon juice seems to actually make a silkier ricotta). And you would have had the opportunity to witness one of my most annoying habits in the kitchen, that is, my propensity to start thirty stories or opinions or conversations without actually following through on any of them.
It tends to happen when I'm feeling most scattered. I'll say three words about the stress of public school. You'll ask me a question. I'll say, "Well," then I stir the cheese, notice that it's heating too fast, then start in on asking you when you're putting your peas in the ground. It goes on in this manner.
And although you are not in my kitchen in a physical sense, you are here in another way, and so I seem to be having the instinct to follow the same pattern with you. For days, I have started different posts in my head, different stories and recipes. I only get so far, and then I, well let's just let all of life's distractions come under the heading of "stir the cheese," and then I'm onto another topic.

Because I can't stay away too long, I am here for better or for worse. I have left the dishes in the sink. The uneaten broccoli and cheese is on the table, and the girls are tucked into their beds reading, or in Rosie's case looking at, their semi-repulsive American girl books. I know they're historical, but, well see, there I go. We'll save that for another day.
And I do want to tell you a story, and I do want to give you a recipe, and so I will do my best to stay focused long enough to make it happen.
Three or four years ago, way back when I still owned slings and diapers, I had a job as what can only be described as a governess. There were three older girls in this family, maybe 11, 13, and 15. Their mother was a world traveler, and she had toted the kids around India and other places, and these girls had not only very unique perspectives on the world, but all three of them had sharp and philosophical minds. They drank in Rousseau like chocolate milk. It was a pretty great job.
I did my best to teach them everything I could, and I got so much back from them. They challenged me to read old books in new ways and they let me travel through their stories and memories. But one of the best things about that job was what I learned at breakfast before our lessons began.
Although we were always scheduled to start at 9, they would usually just be sitting down to breakfast when I got there. They would invite me to join them and someone would pour me a little porcelain cup of tea. Often one of the girls would have gotten creative in the early hours of the morning and there would be popovers and jam or some homemade pastry. But it isn't the actual food that I remember. It was the way that they would display it on the table, and the attitude with which it would be consumed. Those girls taught me about food and luxury, and how an apple can be the fanciest breakfast in the world if you just put a little thought into it. Maybe slice it thin, drizzle it with a touch of honey and a few almonds. It was in my job as a governess that I learned how to make fancy food, not fancy complicated saucy French sort of things, but fancy simple creative things. I learned how to make breakfast in a way that I could confidently bring it to a princess who was waiting for her breakfast in bed. Those girls were princesses in the best sense, and they still are. When they would come over for dinner or an extra math lesson, my own little princesses would shyly approach them with awe and wonder, mystified by the beauty of sisters who looked like they had stepped out of a fairytale with their separate hair colors, perfect red, perfect black, and perfect blond hanging down their backs.

On mornings when there was no fancy pastry, and not even a failed but edible fruit tart, there was apple honey oat snack. It had never occurred to me to eat raw oats until then, but this has remained one of my favorite breakfasts. I've altered it a bit from back then according to my tastes, and so should you, as a fancy breakfast should really be tailored to the princess for which it is created. They are all so different , after all.


Apple Honey Oat Snack

serves 2, or 1 if you are really hungry

1 apple (skin on), cored and cut into 1-inch dice
1 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup old fashioned rolled oats
3 tablespoons grated unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup slivered toasted almonds
3 dates, chopped fine, or a handful of currants
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon honey

Combine all ingredients and mix. Serve immediately.

tools from the bazaar

I'm really back now. The details of day to day life require my presence, and I mean really require it, so I've stopped leaving pots and the stove and daydreaming of little cups of Turkish tea. I'm moving at full speed.

Which, I admit, is not that fast. There is a lot to keep up with. Sadie had her first piano lesson, it's almost time to plant radishes, and I'm working on some, well, let's just call them big projects.

And then there are the lawn signs. I never thought I'd see my name on the lawns of Great Barrington, but the signs are about to be in the mail, and if you have a prominently located lawn in this town, you could be the proud owner of one.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I've been talking about the town budget and the future of the library all day. I know some people think I'm a little nutty for this, but I really like thinking about these things. But at the end of the day, I'm needing a break, just for a few minutes. I need to talk about that thing that makes my heart soar, makes my soul sing.

That's right. You know where I'm going. Let's talk about kitchen gadgets.


Today, it's not food processors or yogurt makers. I want to show you a little assortment of kitchen tools that I found at the bazaar in Istanbul. I know I've been back for a while, and I promise that once I get this out of my system, I'll stick to the goings on in my own kitchen. It's just that when I was wandering the tiny paths of the spice bazaar, the grand bazaar, and the wood bazaar, I kept seeing things that I wanted to show you. These are just the treats I stuffed into my suitcase. I wish I could show you the home smokers in the metal bazaar, but I couldn't take one back on the plane. I've got some pretty good ones, though.

This beauty is called the limonmatic. It screws into a lemon, and then you squeeze the lemon and pour out the juice. The most lovely thing about it, I think, is that you can squeeze a little bit of juice, snap the top on, and put the lemon back in the fridge. It basically turns a fresh lemon into one of those little plastic lemons that you can take a bit of juice out of here and there. Brilliant, isn't it? I know! But that's not all!


I have never seen so many beautiful wooden spoons in one place. I came home with a small variety, but this is my absolute favorite. A wooden slotted spoon! I love how the holes are so randomly placed, like the person who made it really wasn't paying attention. This spoon makes me smile every time I look at it.


This is a sieve. I haven't used it yet, but I look and it and adore it every day. If I don't use it soon, I'm going to have to figure out how to wear it. I don't know why things just aren't as pretty in kitchen shops over here.

And then there is the the rolling table. I saw this in use at the organic bazaar, and I told Molly that I was taking one of them home. Normally they are used by old Turkish grannies to make several traditional kinds of flatbreads. Lissa and I each bought one, and we carried them around Istanbul for the better part of a day, along with two extraordinarily long rolling pins. We got the best looks, and even some comments about the how funny it was that the tourists had bought grannie tables. I like to think that we got a lot of respect that day, but more likely people thought we were a bit crazy. Most Americans bring home rugs and silks from Turkey, but we went for rolling tables.

And here ends my career as a travel writer, for now at least. Thanks for taking this trip with me- I promise there will be more in the future. But back to the kitchen now, and to this little town.

apple rhubarb pandowdy

I like a thing that can reinvent itself with confidence.
Sometimes, it just doesn't work out to be what you set out to create. The day gets messy, and dinner gets abandoned for something altogether different. Or a career seems all laid out, and then a little person decides that your career will actually be mother. I think it's a good thing to be able to adjust without apologies, to say okay, you thought I was this, but now I'm this! Really! This all gives me a lot of hope.

This could have been a pie, but it's really a pandowdy.

I don't know who made the first pandowdy, but I'm guessing that it was not their original intention. Like the woman who made the first tarte tatin out of a failed apple cake, I'm thinking it must have been a happy accident. Maybe they only had enough butter for one crust, and they came to terms with the fact that the top crust was what mattered. Or maybe they were giving pie-making directions to a friend, and as they scribbled out the directions, they wrote "put the filling under the crust" instead of "over." We may just never know.

So what is a pandowdy?
Basically, we're talking about a pie without the bottom crust. Without the bottom layer, there is no risk of crust sog, and the whole thing comes together almost as easy as a crumble. It can be made in a pie pan, but it can also go into a square baking dish or a cast iron skillet, or whatever have you. It is a dessert that will forgive you for your limited baking supplies or your solitary pie crust. It is not meant to be pretty, just delicious. It is a dessert with an adaptable nature.

Yesterday was Joey's birthday. He was 31, and he requested pie.
I'd like to tell you how I started out making a pie and ended up with a pandowdy, how this mess or that mess got in my way, and then I had this fabulous dessert. That would be such a good story.
But really, the truth is that I have this book. Do you remember the Menu for Hope back in December? Well, in addition to offering a prize, I put in a bid for a few. Who could resist? If you didn't participate last year, don't worry, I'll remind you about again next year.
Because the right star seemed to be over my kitchen at the time, I won. I won 8 baking books from Ten Speed Press- really good baking books that I had been reading while loitering at the bookstore. It was pretty dreamy, to put it mildly. The day that box arrived might have been an all time high point for the mail around here.
One of these books is called Rustic Fruit Desserts. It is a beautiful little book that makes me feel even more excited for the 30 cherries that my tree might produce this summer, for peaches from the farmers market, and for apple picking in September. The use of the word "rustic" is my favorite part, because in most cases, by "rustic", I think that Cory Schrieber and Julie Richardson mean, "don't stress how it looks, it will taste great anyway," which basically sums up my whole cooking philosophy. Hell, that might actually sum up the way I feel about life, come to think of it.

As much as I love this little book, Joey loves it even more. Fruit desserts are a form of worship for him- and it is in the oozy strawberry and the flaky pastry that Joey experiences the magic and wonder of the world. In the first couple of months that we were together, Joey and I went on a road trip from Santa Fe to Vancouver. We stopped at every diner in the Pacific Northwest famous for their pies, which turned out to be one every couple of hours. Over huckleberries and sour cherries, we shared the random details that come out over the first few months of a relationship, and I owe a lot of our happiness today to the magic that occurred over those many slices of pie.
So, on Joey's birthday, I set out to make a pandowdy and I made a pandowdy. The book listed it as an ideal dessert from early Spring, an opportunity to combine the last apples of the late fall that are still in storage with the new rhubarb just poking through. Although it is early spring, I have no root cellar and it is far too frigid for my rhubarb to show its first shoots. Luckily, I had piles of rhubarb in my freezer which I combined with apples shipped in from some far off place. Not ideal, but like I said this a dessert of adaptability.

The specific recipe for this filling is brilliant. The balance of sweet and sour, peppered by cinnamon and lemon zest, is better than I've ever had it, and I've done a whole lot of time experimenting with my rhubarb. With vanilla ice cream rustically scooped over the rustic piece-like portion of pandowdy, this was just about the best fruit dessert that has sat on our table in a long time. I hope you're all up for it- as soon as the fruit starts coming around here, I'm going to be baking my way through this whole book. If I hold to it, it should be a pretty good 32nd year for Joey.

Apple Rhubarb Pandowdy
from Rustic Fruit Desserts by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson

1 single crust recipe of all butter pie crust- if you have a go-to recipe for this, go ahead and use it. My favorite right now is here, and I add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice to the ice water.

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, at room temperature, for the pan
4 tart apples, peeled, cored and sliced
5 cups of rhubarb, sliced 1/2 inch thick (this can be used frozen)
zest and juice of one lemon
3/4 cup packed (5 3/4 ounces) light brown sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fines sea salt
Vanilla Ice Cream, for serving

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Butter a 9-inch deep dish pie dish, square baking pan, or cast iron skillet.
Toss the apples, rhubarb, lemon zest, and lemon juice together in a large bowl. Separately, rub together the brown sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and salt, then add to the fruit mixture and stir to combine. Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan.
Roll out the pie pastry to roughly the size of the pan. You want it to be a little thicker than you would typically do for pie. Lay it out over the filling, and tuck the excess crust into the sides of the pan. Cut a few steam vents into the crust, and place the whole thing on top of a baking sheet to collect the drips.
Bake for 20 minutes, and then turn the heat down to 350 degrees. Bake for another 30-35 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the fruit is bubbling around the edges.
Cool for at least an hour, and serve with vanilla ice cream.

way better than it looks

I've been working on reconstructing a taste memory from Turkey. I finally got it, and it was just as good as I remember, but I've got to warn you about something.
Do you see how lovely this dill is, and how the orange of the carrot contrasts with it so perfectly?
I just want you to remember that image, and to close your eyes, and give this a taste.
Don't look at it.

I only give you this photo because I feel that I must. But skip over it. Make this even though it looks gross. Just taste it. Taste on anything, but my favorite these last few days is atop a bagel and cream cheese. Good on bread, good on a little slice of radish, good on a carrot stick.

Sometimes a thing just can't be prettied up. I'm really okay with that. I'm no Martha, I know, but while she's molding things into pretty little shapes, I'll be sitting here, happily submerging everything I can find into my ugly dip.

Carrot Dill Spread

3 large carrots, peeled and chopped into 1 inch pieces
1 cup fresh dill, chopped, plus 1/4 cup dill chopped kept to the side
4 ounces feta cheese
1 cup toasted walnuts
1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
salt to taste

Combine all ingredients except the extra 1/4 cup dill in a food processor. Puree until fairly smooth. Stir in remaining dill, and add salt to taste.

orange soy braised pork ribs

I've been thinking about my grandmother a lot lately.
Maybe it was Turkey. She loved to go to interesting places, and while her friends would go hang out at their condo in Florida, she and my grandfather would be off on a folk dancing trip to Bulgaria. When it came to travel, she was a woman looking for real experience.
Or maybe it has something to do with what has been going on since I got back. A few days after my return, Joey and the girls and I went out to be part of a group photo to support a local library which may soon be extinct. As we were leaving the library and heading over to take Sadie to dance class, a few friends called me over.
"You know how you were thinking about running for the town select board a few years ago?"
It was true. I had considered it, but it just hadn't felt like the right time.
"Well," one friend said, "it's time."
So here I am, running for the select board of my little town. Although I usually end up frustrated when I attend town meetings, I'm going to attempt to step away from apathy and see what happens if I can get a seat at that table. It's a small town, but it is my town, after all.

My grandmother loved Great Barrington with all her being. She and my grandfather moved up here in the early 70's to start their bed and breakfast, and they both lived here until the end of their lives. They were all about participating in their community- between the two of them, they were centrally involved in everything from arts organizations to adult literacy, to the formation of our local co-op market.

I grew up here, and I never thought I'd come back after college. I was at the middle school when the occurrence of knife fights and eighth grade pregnancies was at its highest, and I just couldn't roll my pants or fringe my bangs the right way. But it turns out that as an adult and a parent, this is actually a pretty great place. My children were both born here, and this is their world, too. I'm here for good, and like my grandparents, I'm feeling inspired to put some time into it.
Still, I must say, seeing my name on the ballot at the caucus last night was totally surreal. We went into the fire station after dinner, and the girls cheered that we were "going to vote for mommy!" I know it's a small thing, but I'm just getting used to the idea. The final vote will be on May 10, and I'll be doing my best to refrain from holey jeans when I walk down main street until then. And when people question my sanity for getting into this process, I just think to myself that I'm channeling my grandmother, at least a little bit.

If I'm going to be doing my grandmother's work, I need to be eating my grandmother's food. I think that I've shared this with you before, but it bears repeating: My grandmother was a vegetarian who ate ribs. She never cooked them at home, as my grandfather was a vegetarian who did not eat ribs, but when ever she had the opportunity to sit down in front of a messy stack of ribs, she would roll up the sleeves of her button down shirt and get to work. There was not an ounce of squeamishness in her when it came to ribs- she would suck every thing off those bones, gnaw on them a bit, and then go back to being an avid vegetarian. It was her way.
The night before I left for Turkey, I made these ribs. We ate them with rice and a big pile of greens, and as Sadie sucked on the bones just like her great grandmother Shirley, I knew that they would nourish her through the ten days ahead of pizza and grilled cheese and whatever else lay before her.


Orange Soy Braised Pork Ribs
adapted from Gourmet, January 2005

serves 3-4

2 1/2 pounds pork ribs, separated
2/3 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons grated ginger
a tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 tablespoon freshly ground pepper
1 cup water

Preheat oven to 325 degrees and place rack in the middle of the oven. Sprinkle ribs with salt.

Bring orange juice, soy sauce, sugar, ginger, garlic, and pepper to a boil in roasting pan over medium high heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Add ribs in to the pan, using tongs, turning to coat, and cover pan with a lid or foil.

Braise ribs in oven until very tender, about 2 to 3 hours.

Before Serving: Reduce oven temperature to 200°F.

Transfer ribs to a baking dish, arranging them in 1 layer, and keep warm in oven. Make glaze by boiling liquid, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until syrupy and reduced to about 3/4 cup, about 15 minutes. Brush glaze generously on ribs.